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TOKYO - Chinese President Hu Jintao said Thursday that Japan had nothing to fear from his country's rise and engaged in a round of ping-pong diplomacy on a visit aimed at easing decades of tension.
Paying only the second visit ever by a Chinese head of state to Tokyo, Hu was unusually conciliatory about the two countries' tortured history, voicing gratitude for Japan's assistance since World War II.
"China has taken a defensive military policy and will not engage in any arms race," Hu said in an address at Tokyo's prestigious Waseda University that was broadcast live in Japan.
"We will not become a military threat to any country and we will never assert hegemony or be expansionistic," he said.
Hu delivered the address a day after a summit with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda at which the two leaders agreed to seek peaceful relations and resolve a prolonged territorial dispute.
With Fukuda watching, Hu later took off his jacket and glasses and showed his skill in a brief round of ping-pong with Ai Fukuhara, a Japanese table tennis star who is popular in China.
"This is a very strategic (game of) ping-pong. I think we have to remain on guard," Fukuda, a long-time advocate of reconciliation with China, said to compliment Hu's skills.
The atmosphere was a far cry from just a few years ago. China refused all contact with Japan during the 2001-2006 premiership of Junichiro Koizumi due to
his annual visits to a shrine that honours Japanese war dead including war criminals.
Koizumi was conspicuously absent when Hu had breakfast Thursday with former prime ministers. But in his address, Hu avoided berating Japan over its past.
"History is our textbook. The reason why we remember history is not because of our animosity, but because we hope to learn from history to build the future," Hu said.
"Friendship between China and Japan serves to bring world peace," he said.
A day after welcoming Japan's "peaceful" role since World War II, Hu, in rare remarks for a Chinese leader, praised Japan's decades of low-interest loans to Beijing.
"China will forever remember that many Japanese people have put their heart and soul into China's development," Hu said to loud applause.
But not everyone was happy to see Hu, who was paying his first visit overseas since major protests broke out in Tibet in March against Chinese rule.
On the Waseda University campus, more than 100 protesters, including students and ordinary citizens, waved Tibetan flags and chanted "Free Tibet!"
Police separated the protesters from a rival group of mostly Chinese students who shouted slogans in support of the Beijing Olympics.
"I decided to take part in this, not because of leftist or rightist political ideologies, but as a citizen," said Tadashi Miyamoto, a freelance event producer.
"I can't fathom the reasons for hiding people's deaths."
Tibet's officials-in-exile say more than 200 people have been killed in the Chinese crackdown. China denies this and instead blames Tibetan "rioters" and "insurgents" for killing 21 people.
Fukuda said he raised the Tibet issue with Hu. Japan also said that China had agreed to a resumption of a regular dialogue on human rights, which had been suspended since 2000.
Former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who launched a reconciliation drive with China in 2006, said he also voiced concern about Tibet during the breakfast meeting but reiterated Japan's support for the Beijing Olympics. - AFP/ir
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